


Amid The Guns

by Miko



Series: We Shall Keep The Faith [6]
Category: Agent Carter (TV), Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Implied/Referenced Brainwashing, Lost Love, Love Triangles, Unresolved Romantic Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-06
Updated: 2015-05-08
Packaged: 2018-03-29 06:44:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3886309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miko/pseuds/Miko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's more going on behind the Winter Soldier program than Steve ever realized. What he finds when he starts to dig deeper will change his life forever.</p><p> </p><p>This fic should be read in sequence with the rest of the series.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Steve had never slept well, for one reason or another, through most of his life. Before the serum it had been his asthma, heart trouble, and other health concerns that either woke him up or caused him too much pain to sleep in the first place. During the war and especially after the ice it was nightmares that plagued him, too many bad memories and worse fears haunting him to allow for restful dreams.

Having Natasha in his bed didn’t stop the night terrors from coming. Steve wished it would, but his sleeping mind didn’t know or care that she was there beside him. 

What did change was that when the dreams woke him, he wasn’t alone in a cold bed with nothing but the memories to keep him company. He could roll over, draw Natasha close, and soak up the warmth of her body as a poultice against the pain. She’d murmur drowsy complaints - she didn’t mind sharing the bed but didn’t like actually sleeping in contact with him - but she never pulled away when she felt him shaking. 

Every so often he was the one who would wake to find Natasha huddled up against him, so he knew he wasn’t alone in finding comfort through contact. He’d wrap his arms around her and let her stay until her shivering stopped, and neither of them said a word about any of it in the daylight.

Considerably less of the base’s operating budget needed to be allocated to punching bags after Steve and Natasha became an item. They didn’t share space every night, but it was frequent enough to make a difference.

The best part, though, was waking up in the morning with her there. They were both accustomed to rising with the sun, and that meant they usually had a while before they _needed_ to get up and be anywhere. Steve thoroughly enjoyed waking her with his hands and mouth on the intimate places of her body, so that by the time she opened her eyes she was already teetering on the edge of orgasm.

Although given how quickly Natasha woke under any other circumstances, he suspected she might be deliberately playing possum until the pleasure was too much for her to stay quiet any longer, just so he wouldn’t stop ‘waking’ her. Whatever the case, it was a pretty damned good way to start the day.

The warmth of the first rays of light through the big east-facing window woke him as usual. Steve left the glass undarkened most of the time, because there was nobody out there to see anything and he thought Natasha looked gorgeous clothed in nothing but the morning sun. 

When he reached for her, however, his searching hand found nothing but cool, empty sheets. Confused, he opened his eyes and scanned the room, confirming what touch had already told him - Natasha was nowhere to be found.

Dawn came very early at this time of year, so for her to have been gone long enough for the sheets to cool and the dent to leave her pillow meant she’d gotten up in the middle of the night. Frowning, Steve rolled out of bed and grabbed the first clothing that came to hand. If she’d gotten up and left instead of turning to him for comfort, her dreams must have been really damned bad.

He hurried out into the rest of his suite - and stopped short in the doorway of the living room. Natasha was slung sideways on the couch, her back supported by a mound of pillows she’d piled against the arm, surrounded by a slew of holographic readouts. The data pad generating the images was on her lap, and she was flipping through a series of graphs and text and diagrams with a frown of intense concentration on her face.

Reassured that she wasn’t alone somewhere struggling with her demons, Steve turned in the other direction and headed for the small kitchen unit. He rarely used it for meals, but the coffeemaker was top of the line and fully stocked with both of their favourite blends. It only took a moment to get two steaming cups, and then he carried them back into the living room.

It wasn’t often that he could sneak up on her, but she was so absorbed in whatever she was doing that he did it by accident. She jumped a little when he tapped the side of the warm mug lightly against her shoulder, and looked up at him wide-eyed. She seemed tired, as he’d expect if she hadn’t gotten any sleep, but not haunted the way she would be if the cause had been nightmares.

“You’re up early,” he commented as she took the cup from him.

“Mmm, and you’re a saint,” she said with sincere appreciation after taking a sip. “Is it dawn already? I didn’t mean to be at this all night, but I guess I lost track of time.”

Pulling most of the pillows out of her pile, Steve perched on the arm of the couch and let her lean against him for support instead. Reading over her shoulder, he frowned as he recognized some of the text. “Isn’t that the data we retrieved from Chernobyl?”

“I woke up at two in the morning with a revelation, and it wouldn’t leave me alone until I came out here to double-check the numbers,” she told him ruefully. “I figured there was no point in making you lose sleep as well, especially since it might have been a wild goose chase.”

“We’ve had the computer run that data half a dozen times. What else is there to find?” Steve studied the screens, but he didn’t see anything more than every other time he’d looked at this information. The readouts she was looking at were all reports on the cryostasis chamber they’d kept Bucky in when he wasn’t active.

“With the exceptions of Ultron and Vision that very much prove the rule, computers can only give you what you ask them to.” She took another sip of her coffee. “They can’t make true leaps of logic or intuition, though programs as advanced as Jarvis can fool you into thinking that they can. If he’d really been able to, we wouldn’t have needed Tony for the actual breakthroughs.”

“Yeah, so?” Steve wasn’t sure where she was going with this. Certainly there had been other information in the data they’d recovered, things like troop movements and supply lists and statistics from the radar array, but there was no reason to care about any of that now.

Natasha made a sweeping gesture with her free hand, and the screens spun until they settled out into a succession of graphs. “This is six months of the cryo data for Barnes. Heartbeat, respiration, internal temperature, brain activity, the works. There are wobbles here and there,” she pointed at a place where the lines dipped to nothing and then jumped again a few days later. “Presumably when they removed him and put him back. Overall it’s pretty consistent, as you’d expect it to be.”

Studying the graphs again, Steve still had no idea what had gotten her worked up. It all looked exactly as she described, steady readings with a few aberrations. “So?”

Flicking her fingers, Natasha raised the existing screens, then tapped at the pad and produced another row of six beneath the first. “So, what the hell are these?”

With the two sets side by side, the difference was glaring. The second group was just as consistent as the first, without even the variations to indicate there had been a change in status - but the numbers didn’t match.

“That... that can’t be Bucky,” Steve exclaimed, leaning closer as if decreasing the distance would force the data to make sense. “Can it? What would cause such a significant change that would then stabilize into a new norm?”

“Look at the dates,” Natasha said, pointing at the numbers printed at the top right hand corner of each of the reports.

“They’re the same.” Steve stared at the readouts, stunned. “Those are two sets of graphs for the same six months. They had _two_ people in the ice? How did the computer miss this?”

“We asked it to analyze the data and tell us everything it could about Barnes. It sorted out which charts were the ones that belong to him based on height, weight, muscle mass, et cetera,” Natasha said. “Then it discarded the non-conforming data with the rest of the irrelevant material, just like the info from the radar array. Something in the back of my mind kept bugging me about it, and last night I finally remembered I’d seen a graph that didn’t match when I was looking at the raw data in Chernobyl.”

“Who is it? Is there any indication?” Had they created a second weapon like the Winter Soldier? Why, when keeping Bucky contained and programmed had to be a huge resource drain? In case something happened and Bucky was hurt?

“No sign of a name, but then Barnes’ info was all under ‘asset’ with no hint of his identity, either.” Natasha shrugged. “She’s labelled as ‘control’, but if they wanted a control subject for comparison to Barnes, it makes no sense that they’d choose someone so different from his physical stats.”

“She?” Steve’s attention was riveted by that one word.

“Computer says high probability it’s a woman, based on the bio monitoring readouts.”

A thousand possibilities spilled through Steve’s mind. “A female counterpart. Someone to handle your style of wetwork, maybe?” Bucky was one of the best snipers Steve had ever encountered, and they’d found indications that he sometimes killed up close as well, but he wasn’t exactly inconspicuous. It was difficult to picture him sidling up to a target without attracting significant attention, but sometimes HYDRA might have wanted something other than an obvious assassination or an ‘accident’.

But Natasha was shaking her head. “What I do requires a lot more freedom of thought and worldly knowledge than Barnes appeared to have,” she told him. “Wiping and programming someone wouldn’t be enough. That’s why they created the Red Room in the first place - they started training us so young they got the absolute loyalty without the need for extreme conditioning, and the result is an asset who has the flexibility necessary to work as a spy and assassin instead of a killer. I _am_ his female counterpart.”

“Your loyalty wasn’t absolute,” Steve pointed out, putting a hand on her shoulder.

“Speaking of exceptions that prove the rule.” Natasha smiled up at him, but her eyes were shuttered, her real emotions buried beneath the mask. She didn’t do that as often with him anymore, not to this extent, but talking about her past always shut her down. “My defection is the result of a set of extraordinary circumstances that had never happened before, and that they’ll make sure will never happen again.”

“Barton winning you over instead of killing you,” Steve said, nodding. 

“That wasn’t the only factor, but it was certainly the deciding one.” There were a hundred things going on behind Natasha’s eyes that Steve couldn’t read, but now wasn’t the time to push her. It was never the time to push her; if she was going to trust him with any of it, he knew it would have to be on her terms and her timeline.

Instead, he focused on the more urgent matter at hand. “So that still leaves us with the question, who the hell is this?”

“They had her at the Chernobyl base for exactly the same period as Barnes, but they took him out a half dozen times, and her only twice,” Natasha said, expanding the screens to show several years worth of graphs. “They also never left her out for more than a day, but sometimes he was out for weeks. Whatever they had her for, I doubt it involved leaving the base.”

“And it can’t be a coincidence that she was brought in and out at the same time as Bucky.” Steve frowned at the graphs, but he still couldn’t make sense of it. “You don’t... you don’t think they were _breeding_ him, do you?” The idea made him sick.

“No, the cryo would have messed with her cycle too much. Even if it were possible for her to conceive, an embryo could never survive the freezing. Although...” she paused, and her expression darkened. “It could have been a reward for him, I suppose. Both times she was awake were at the end of two of his longer periods of activity, and then they were both put back to sleep. You’d think it would be easier and cheaper to hire a whore and kill her after, though.”

Steve honestly wasn’t sure which thought was less appealing - that they’d forced Bucky to have sex with someone in order to breed new supersoldiers, or that they’d provided him with a ‘reward’ in the form of a woman presumably too broken to object or fight back. “So where is she now?”

“Well, that’s the question, isn’t it.” Natasha tapped the pad again, bringing up a new set of data - shipping records, from the look of it. “These are the chemicals and supplies HYDRA would need to run the cryo chambers. Stark gave us the breakdown after he reverse engineered the equipment we found in Chernobyl, but I assumed it wasn’t helpful to us since we know Barnes isn’t being kept in the ice right now.” She highlighted one of the entries, with a receiving address in Latveria. “This is the only ‘factory’ ordering the exact combination and amounts of the necessary materials in recent months. Presumably she was in D.C. with Barnes, but they must have moved her after all the chaos started.”

Steve stood, careful to make sure she didn’t tip over without him behind her anymore. “We need to find her, get her out of there, and see if we can help her. Chances are good she’s as much a captive as Bucky, and that means she was probably an ally at some point.”

“She may not be any more, Steve,” Natasha cautioned him. “If she’s as broken as Barnes, she’ll be just as dangerous and she _won’t_ have his hesitation to hurt you. On the other hand, it does give us a chance to test our theories for how to deprogram him. And you’re right, if she’s a captive she deserves to be rescued, even if it ends up being just so we can put her out of her misery.”

“We’re _not_ killing her,” Steve said firmly. “We hit the base, we get the cryo chamber, and we bring it back here. If our techs can’t figure out how to wake her safely, we’ll call in Stark.”

“Are we bringing the others? Might be a good training exercise for them, and Maximoff should be able to read her even through the ice to tell us how bad it’s going to be.”

Steve considered it, then shook his head. “No, they’re not operating as a team, yet. Maximoff can tell us if she’s a threat just as easily here as there. It’s not like we’re going to wake her up. You and I should be able to handle it.”

“Then what are we waiting for?” Standing, Natasha set her coffee aside and stretched, grinning at him. “Let’s go rescue Barnes’ girlfriend.”


	2. Chapter 2

Stepping over the body of one of the techs she’d just stunned, Natasha let the door to the control room shut behind her and surveyed the area. Banks of computers lined both sides of the room, but the far wall was made entirely of sections of glass.

It wasn’t the wall itself that held her attention - it was the equipment that occupied the space beyond. More specifically, the slender brunette woman lying on a steel table, dressed in something that looked like a wetsuit modified with ports that had wires running from her vital points to nearby monitors. The cryostasis chamber stood open behind the table, and it was clear that the woman had been in it not long ago.

“Cap, we’ve got a problem,” Natasha said into her comm, moving forward to bend over one of the computers. 

“You can’t find her?” Steve’s voice sounded like it was inside her head; the earpiece comms Stark had designed always had that effect.

“No, I found her all right. She’s just not in the chamber.” Natasha studied the readouts on the screen. It didn’t mean as much to her as it would have to Banner or Stark, but she understood enough.

Heartbeat, respiration, and brainwave function were all rising rapidly - they’d been in the middle of waking the woman up, and Natasha had no idea how to put her to sleep again. Assuming it was even safe to reverse the process in the middle.

“She’s almost awake,” Natasha told Steve. “If we’re going to take her with us, it’ll have to be the dangerous way. Should I go in and cuff her while she’s still out of it?”

“Not the best introduction we could have, but I think you’d better.” Steve sounded winded, and she heard explosions in the background. “Hopefully she’ll forgive us. Sooner rather than later, please, I could use a hand out here. We underestimated how much resistance we’d encounter - I didn’t think HYDRA had this many people _left_.”

“They might have concentrated what remained to protect her,” Natasha pointed out. A flash of motion reflected in the glass wall warned her, and she jabbed her elbow straight back into the throat of the tech attempting to creep up on her.

She felt the crunch as she crushed his larynx, and he gurgled helplessly as he dropped. “And here I was trying to go easy on you since you didn’t attack me in the first place,” Natasha sighed, and shot him twice in the head to put him out of his misery. 

When she turned to check the other tech was still out cold. Satisfied, she headed for the inner room, pulling out the specialized cuffs SHIELD had designed to contain Enhanced. They could hold Steve - not forever, but long enough. Natasha didn’t know if this woman had been treated with the same serum as Barnes, but better safe than sorry.

The woman didn’t so much as twitch when the door slid open, but Natasha still approached cautiously. She was pretty enough, though her hair was limp with melting frost and the wetsuit was hardly flattering. It was impossible to guess how long HYDRA had been holding her, but she appeared to be in her early thirties. No sign that they’d replaced any of her limbs, so that was something. 

“Sorry about this,” Natasha apologized sincerely as she reached for the woman’s left wrist and snapped the cuff onto it.

Suddenly the woman’s hand closed over her wrist in turn, holding Natasha in place. “Not half as sorry as you’re going to be,” she snarled, her British accent clipping the words off like she was biting each one as it came out. Rolling onto her side, she ripped the IV needle from the back of her hand and slashed at Natasha’s throat with it. 

Jerking out of reach, Natasha grabbed the thumb of the hand holding hers and yanked on it, forcing it back towards the woman’s arm until she was forced to release her grip. Natasha caught the other half of the cuffs, but a quick look around showed there was nothing available to attach them to. 

She’d hesitated too long, looking for a way to immobilize her assailant. The woman rolled off the table, pulling Natasha’s second gun out of the holster as she went.

Cursing, Natasha kicked it out of her hand again before she could raise it enough to fire. It went clattering against the wall, out of reach of either of them. Natasha raised hers in turn, but the woman closed in on her too quickly to fire, ducking inside her reach and grappling with her, trying to force her back into the table to limit her manoeuvrability.

If they’d done anything to enhance this subject, it wasn’t the same serum Barnes had. She was no stronger or faster than ordinary; she was a good enough fighter to stall Natasha for a few moments, but not enough to keep her at bay forever. Although considering she’d only just woken from cryostasis, it was a fair bet she wasn’t performing at her best.

Twisting to the side to avoid being pinned, Natasha caught the dangling half of the cuffs again. This time she used it as a grip to help her lever the woman’s arm around behind her back, forcing it up and tight against her shoulder blades. 

The move spun them both around, Natasha pressed against the other woman’s back and both of them facing the glass wall. Instead of fighting the hold, the woman went rigid, staring through the windows at the downed techs beyond.

“Wait!” she cried, sounding startled rather than angry. Natasha firmed her grip but didn’t make any further moves, waiting to see what her captive would do next.

Turning her head, the woman looked back at Natasha over her shoulder, and there was a fragile sort of hope in her eyes. “You’re not HYDRA?”

Well, that put a bit of a different complexion on things. Natasha hadn’t even considered the fact that there was no way for the woman to know that Natasha wasn’t one of her normal handlers. And that meant she had been attacking what she _thought_ was a HYDRA member.

“I’m Black Widow,” Natasha told her, easing her grip so the hold wouldn’t be quite so painful, but not enough that the woman would be able to twist free easily. “One of the Avengers.”

That earned her a blank look, and Natasha sighed. “Never mind, I guess you probably aren’t up on current events. Do you know what SHIELD is?”

“You’re with SHIELD?” The hope in her expression blossomed tenfold, and Natasha had to steady her as her knees seemed to give out on her. “Thank God. I thought they’d have given up looking for me ages ago.”

“Agent Natasha Romanoff,” Natasha said, letting go of her wrist entirely and helping her ease back to lean on the table. The woman wasn’t resisting at all now, and seemed genuinely grateful to hear that Natasha was with SHIELD. Natasha decided not to go into detail about the whole ‘former agent’ technicality, it would only raise questions again.

“Agent Margaret Sousa,” the woman replied. “But I suppose you knew that already, if you’re here to rescue me.”

“I hate to disappoint you, but we weren’t looking for you, specifically,” Natasha told her, making her tone contrite. “We were tracking the cryo chamber, we had no idea who would be in it.”

Margaret bit her lip, but shook her head after a moment. “Yes, of course. As I said, I didn’t really expect they’d still be searching for me. What year is it?” Before Natasha could answer, Margaret clenched her hands against the edge of the table as an urgent expression crossed her face. “You said you were looking for the cryo chamber. Is there a second one? There would be a man in it, a man with a metal arm, they usually keep him somewhere near me.”

“You mean the Winter Soldier? The asset?” Not that there were likely to be two men matching that description, but Natasha wanted to be certain.

To her surprise, anger flashed in Margaret’s eyes. “Don’t call him that,” she said sharply. “His name is Bucky Barnes, and he is a _person_ , not the weapon HYDRA has tried to turn him into.”

“Interesting,” Natasha murmured. Who the hell _was_ this woman, that she called Barnes by his old nickname and defended him so fiercely? “He’s not here. We’re tracking him too, but he’s been out of the ice for quite a while now.”

“Natasha, status?” Steve’s voice came over the comm.

“I think we’re good here,” Natasha reported, making the woman frown at her in confusion. She couldn’t hear Steve, of course, and given she’d been in Hydra’s control since at least the early eighties, probably had no idea they could make radios tiny enough that they wouldn’t be visible. “She’s awake but not hostile... well, not once she realized I wasn’t HYDRA.”

“Then get moving, we’ve got incoming,” Steve ordered. “They must have been out patrolling, because they’re coming in from the outside. We need to get back to the quinjet ASAP.”

“On our way.” Natasha smiled at Margaret and offered her a hand. “Let’s go, sleeping beauty, our escort awaits. Sounds like he’s been taking a beating out there, so we probably shouldn’t make him await too long.”

“There are only two of you?” Margaret asked, accepting the hand and letting Natasha steady her for the first few steps. The way she wobbled confirmed Natasha’s suspicion that she was still weak from the cryo, so she must have been pretty damned determined to hurt Natasha to do as well in the fight as she had.

“In our defence, we are the Avengers,” Natasha chuckled, even though she knew it didn’t mean anything to Margaret. “We rarely need more than two of the team unless it’s a damned tough mission. You’ve got a lot to catch up on, I’m afraid.”

They had to stop to steal the shoes from the tech Natasha had killed - the other one had wisely fled while Natasha was otherwise occupied. The shoes were too big, but they were better than Margaret trying to walk over the rough ground between the compound and the jet in her bare feet. 

“I feel horribly exposed in this ridiculous suit, but judging by what you’re wearing, I’m not all that out of fashion,” Margaret quipped as they headed down the hallway at a quick trot.

“Well it’s probably not what I’d wear to the fun kind of party, but for this kind it’s appropriate.” Natasha silently added ‘at least pre-seventies’ to her mental file on the woman. If she felt exposed in a bodysuit, she couldn’t have first gone into the ice any later than that. It was a very good sign that she still had a sense of humour, though. 

Or else, a very bad one, if HYDRA had found a way to program someone without making it as obvious as it was with Barnes. There was still the possibility that Margaret had seen the bodies and decided to play helpless victim to find out more about her enemies and make them drop their guard.

It was what Natasha would have done, if their circumstances were reversed.

Spotting an exit up ahead, Natasha touched a hand to her ear to indicate to Margaret that she was talking to her partner. “Cap, what’s your twenty?”

“Southeast entrance,” Steve replied, and she heard the distinctive clang of his shield hitting several metal objects one after another. “They’re coming in hot, be ready.”

That was the same exit they were heading for. “We’re approaching on your six, thirty seconds. Try not to hit us with the shield on the way out, please.” Natasha drew both guns and pulled the slides, making certain the chambers were clear. “Stay behind me,” she ordered Margaret.

The other woman looked startled. “Wait, what did you mean...”

They hit the door before she could finish the question, and Natasha started firing the moment she was clear. Two HYDRA goons dropped with her first shots, and another screamed. Steve had moved off to one side, knowing she’d come out with guns blazing, and he was dealing with another half dozen trying desperately to dogpile him.

Natasha shot the one clinging to his right arm, and Steve promptly used the freed limb to throw his shield into the air. It ploughed straight into a small hoversled that had been heading towards them, neatly bisecting the pilot’s window and probably the pilot as well. The sled hit the ground hard, showering dirt and rocks into the air. Steve dove forward into a roll and came up next to it, snatched his shield out of the damaged machine and threw it again. 

It rebounded off three more of the goons, and Natasha shot the last two before the shield made it back to him. They both stood tense for a moment, waiting for a further attack, but none came. 

“We’ve got a window of about two minutes before the next incoming,” Steve said, straightening from his fighting crouch. “There must be another bunker out...”

“ _Steve_?” Margaret’s voice was strident, almost shrill. Startled, Natasha looked around, and saw her clutching at the door to the base like it was the only thing holding her up. “Oh my God... Steve... you’re... you’re _alive_?”

A strangely resonant thud drew Natasha’s attention back to Steve. The shield was on the ground - not like Steve had put it there intentionally, but as if he’d simply forgotten to hold on to it. What she could see of his skin under the helmet was pale as skim milk, and his eyes were so wide he looked comical. 

Natasha felt no less shocked than they looked. In all the years she’d worked with Steve, she’d _never_ seen him drop his shield like that. Lose his grip on it, yes, but not just let go of it. For that matter, the only time she’d seen him look that haunted had been after their first encounter with Wanda, when he’d just had his darkest nightmare thrown in his face.

“You’re _alive_!” Margaret repeated, her voice still full of disbelief but with joy starting to creep in. She flung herself at Steve, heedless of the bodies scattered all around. He stood there unmoving as she wrapped her arms around his neck and buried her face in his shoulder. “How... what... where... _how_?”

Slowly Steve reached up and caught her by the shoulders, his movements as jerky as an automaton. He pulled her away enough to be able to get a good look at her face, his expression one of stunned incomprehension, and finally spoke a single word. “ _Peggy_?” 

Now that was a name Natasha knew. Hell, probably everyone in the United States knew about Captain America’s tragic love story, the girl he’d lost when he went into the ice. The woman’s use of ‘Bucky’ and fierce protectiveness certainly made more sense in that context. Judging by the way she was clinging, her feelings for Steve hadn’t changed any.

Sternly Natasha told the spike of jealousy that stung her to go to hell. The rules of their relationship didn’t just apply to Steve’s interactions with her. Even if this almost certainly meant that relationship had just come to an abrupt end. Maybe especially in that case.

How the hell could she compete with his long lost love returned from the dead?


	3. Chapter 3

It couldn’t be real. It simply couldn’t be real. Steve Rogers was _dead_. Not only that, Peggy knew it had been at least twenty years since she’d been put in the ice and probably more. Even if Steve had somehow survived – and had chosen not to return to her – he wouldn’t look the same.

And yet the feel of him against her, the sound of his voice when he spoke, the scent of him she’d caught when she buried her face against his chest, it was all exactly as she remembered.

The shield was equally unmistakable, and the way he wielded it – surely no one else would be able to calculate angles and momentum fast enough and throw accurately enough to hit three targets and still have it return to him.

But it couldn’t be real. Could it? Peggy stared up at him, trying to convince herself one way or the other.

“Guys? I hate to break up the touching reunion, but we still have incoming to deal with.” The voice of the agent who’d rescued her, Romanoff, broke through Peggy’s reverie.

And through Steve’s as well, judging by the way he jerked back and hastily released her, taking a quick step away. When he turned towards the other woman, Peggy read guilt in his eyes. “Natasha...”

“Save it, Rogers,” Romanoff cut him off. “We’re on the clock.”

“Right.” All signs of confusion or shame vanished as Steve straightened his shoulders. He held out his left arm and opened his hand as far as it would go, and his shield flew abruptly across the intervening space and into place on his forearm. “Let’s move.”

Peggy felt something clench hard in her chest. Were the two of them together? She couldn’t imagine what else would have prompted that little exchange. Resolutely she pushed the question and associated feelings aside, exactly as Steve had just done. They were professionals, and this was not the time. 

“If we’re going to be fighting our way out, I don’t suppose I can have one of those?” she asked, gesturing at Romanoff’s guns as they headed away from the base at a trot. Peggy could tell they wanted to be moving faster, but between her badly oversized footwear and the weakness that still pervaded her limbs, she simply wouldn’t be able to keep up.

The other woman quirked an eyebrow at Steve. “Cap? Your call. She seems fine, but there’s no way to be sure what they might have done to her.”

Steve gave Peggy a surprisingly hard look, and shook his head. “No. Until we know for certain what’s in her head, no weapons.”

“Fair enough,” Peggy had to acquiesce. She could hardly blame them for their caution. After seeing what HYDRA had done to Bucky… well, small wonder Steve didn’t trust her just because it was _her_.

Steve and Romanoff stayed just ahead and to either side of Peggy, flanking and protecting her. Romantically involved or not, it was clear that the pair were very much accustomed to working together, needing nothing more than body language and the occasional exchanged glance to coordinate their movements.

They led her to what appeared to be an empty clearing just past the base perimeter, which left her thoroughly confused until Romanoff touched something on her belt and a doorway opened in mid-air. It looked like the ramp of a small cargo plane, and the inside was perfectly visible, but Peggy still couldn’t see any sign of the outside of the ship.

“Go, I’ll cover you,” Steve ordered, gesturing both of them inside. He switched hands with his shield and flung it, just in time to hit another of the strange flying sleds that appeared over the trees. 

Peggy followed Romanoff inside. The space was bigger than she’d expected, much wider. Without prompting she threw herself into one of the jump seats and strapped in, as Romanoff took what was clearly the pilot’s chair.

An explosion from outside heralded Steve’s arrival, and the ramp closed behind him as he ran in. Before it was even shut the plane lifted – straight into the air, like a helicopter, but Peggy couldn’t hear any rotors. 

Steve took the seat across the aisle from her, removing his helmet as he sat. His hair was much shorter than she remembered, presumably a modern style for whatever year this was – she never had gotten that question answered. Peggy tried not to feel hurt by the way he looked at her, as though he wasn’t quite certain what he was supposed to do with her and wasn’t all that happy to be faced with the question. 

The momentum of the aircraft shifted as they started to move forward as well as up. “How are you still alive?” Peggy demanded, still trying to process the impossibility of it. “I heard you crash. Howard searched for months; he refused to give up long after all hope was lost. For that matter, how can you still look the same as you did in the nineteen forties?”

“The combination of the ice and the serum somehow kept me frozen, but alive and in stasis,” Steve said. “Same as what HYDRA did to you, only it happened by accident.”

“SHIELD found the plane and dug him up a few years ago,” Romanoff added from up front. “When we realized he was still alive, well, we weren’t exactly going to shuffle him off to a retirement home. We’re clear, by the way. Stealth mode is fully active, no sign they’re tracking us. Looks like they’re regrouping at the base instead.” 

She flipped a couple of switches, then swung the seat around so she could see them, forming a triangle between the three of them. Clearly modern automatic pilot controls were far more advanced than what Peggy was used to, if she was comfortable paying no attention to the flight.

Steve glanced over at the control panel, and raised an eyebrow. “You’re heading for the tower?”

Romanoff shrugged. “I figured a familiar city might be more reassuring to her than a quasi-military base in the middle of nowhere. We can bring Maximoff there to scan her instead.”

“Trust me, there’s not much familiar about New York anymore,” Steve snorted. 

“Well, I also assumed you’d want to keep her off SHIELD’s radar for now,” Romanoff said. “That will be easier with Stark than Hill.”

“Stark?” Peggy repeated, startled. Howard was dead, she knew that for certain – Bucky had gone AWOL after that mission, and they’d had to use her as bait to lure him back in. 

“Howard’s son, Tony,” Steve told her. He was leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, still watching her warily like he expected her to jump up and attack him at any moment. “He bankrolls our operation. Maria Hill manages operations at Avengers HQ now, but I know for a fact she still reports to Director Fury if she thinks it’s necessary.”

“Director of SHIELD? But why are you trying to keep me off their radar, I thought you _were_ SHIELD?” Peggy turned a confused look on Romanoff.

The other woman looked mildly apologetic. “I figured under the circumstances, ‘former SHIELD’ probably wouldn’t be as reassuring,” she said. “It fell apart about a year and a half ago, when we found out HYDRA had been running things all along. They’re pulling themselves together again, but in the meantime, the Avengers Initiative took on a life of its own as we stepped up to fill in the gaps.”

“And I still don’t trust Fury,” Steve added, his tone brusque. “Not completely, not after everything that’s happened. He’s a useful ally, but he still thinks keeping secrets is a good idea.”

“You know about HYDRA, then. Well, obviously, since you were attacking their base, but you know about their infiltration of SHIELD.” Peggy felt both relieved and regretful. How long had it taken before the infestation had finally been uncovered? How much damage had been done in the meantime? And it was all on her shoulders. She was the one who had approved Zola for recruitment.

That reminded her of another very urgent matter, however. “Agent Romanoff said you were searching for the asset and found me instead. Steve, it’s _Bucky_. They captured him after he fell and brainwashed him.”

“Yeah, we know.” Steve’s expression hardened further as he said it, but there was a familiar light of determination in his eyes. Peggy knew that look very well – it was the one he got whenever he was facing seemingly impossible odds and refused to give up.

“He tried to kill us both a while back,” Romanoff added with a wry smile. “Didn’t work out so well for him. That’s part of how we found out HYDRA was running things.”

“He shot me four times and didn’t hit anything vital,” Steve said, and his tone suggested the words were part of an argument he had frequently. “He’s a better shot than that, there’s no way it wasn’t intentional. Subconscious, maybe, but intentional. And he saved my life when he pulled me out of the river.”

“True, but before all that, he tried to kill you,” Romanoff countered. “I’m not disagreeing with you, Steve. We know he’s questioning his orders now, or he’d have gone back to HYDRA a long time ago.”

“He’s AWOL again?” That lifted Peggy’s heart considerably. “For a year and a _half_? Why on earth did they wait so long to unfreeze me, if that’s the case? They’ve never let him go more than a week without reporting before.”

“They were a little busy dealing with the Avengers.” Steve was watching her again with that calculating expression. “What does unfreezing you have to do with Bucky not reporting, though?”

“That’s what they’ve kept me for,” Peggy told him, and she couldn’t prevent her bitterness from showing in her voice. “As a leash and a noose around his neck. They bring me out to punish him by hurting me, if he fails or disobeys badly enough. They sent him after me in 1954. I was supposed to be his first official kill, but he followed me for a week and couldn’t bring himself to pull the trigger, without knowing why. He finally kidnapped me in an effort to understand.”

She had to pause for a moment and bite her lip, as sorrow and grief rose up to choke her. When she spoke again, her voice was hoarse. “I convinced him to let me take him somewhere safe, away from HYDRA. I nearly had him back, Steve. He was remembering things, answering to his name, asking about _you_. And then I mucked it up when I tried to bring in someone I thought was an ally to help with the deprogramming.”

“Zola,” Steve said, and it was only marginally a question. Peggy nodded anyway.

“He had some way of controlling Bucky with command phrases. Even so, when Zola ordered him to kill me, Bucky refused. That made Zola realize I must be important to Bucky, and so he took me back as well.” 

She shivered, trying not to think of what had followed from that discovery. It had been long and excruciatingly painful, all the more so because they’d made Bucky watch and she’d seen how her pain had been far worse torture for him than for her. “I’m not certain how much of that Bucky remembers, but they’ve programmed him such that his primary directive is to make certain I’m protected – and they’ve defined ‘protected’ as ‘safe in the ice’.”

“So all they have to do is wake you and make sure he finds out about it, and he’ll be drawn straight to you in an attempt to put you back into ‘safety’.” Romanoff tapped her fingers against the chair arm. “That explains why all your data was labeled ‘control’ - you weren’t a control subject in the experiment, you were their way of controlling him. On the bright side, there’s no reason we can’t use you for exactly the same purpose, to bring him to us instead of chasing him around the world.”

“I won’t allow him to be put in another cage,” Peggy said fiercely. Looking at Steve, she added, “Not even by you. He’s suffered enough.”

Was it her imagination, or did Steve soften marginally towards her at that? “Nobody’s putting him in a cage,” he said, no less firm than Peggy had been. “We’re coaxing him in, not dragging him, and we’ve got plans in place to help him. But yes, I’ll use you to get his attention if I can.”

Romanoff was giving him a strange look now, as if she was as confused as Peggy why Steve was treating her like a potential enemy. Peggy understood that he was probably concerned about whether HYDRA might have turned her into some kind of sleeper agent, but that didn’t explain the depth of his hostility.

“So Peggy from Margaret I get,” Romanoff said, and her tone was just a bit too carefully light and curious. Peggy would have bet real money she was actually trying to feel out the reason for Steve’s tension. “Everyone who’s been to the Smithsonian in the last three years or so knows Steve’s lost love is Peggy Carter, though. You said your name is Sousa.”

“Yes, it’s my... married name.” Peggy finished the sentence a bit uncertainly, touching the ring finger of her left hand in an automatic gesture. They’d taken her rings, of course, but the habit was hard to break. She flicked a glance at Steve from beneath her lashes, but he at least didn’t seem any _more_ upset with her at the discovery that she’d married another man. “I suppose my husband has probably long since given me up for dead. I don’t even know if I should try to find him or not.”

“Daniel Sousa died in 1978,” Steve told her, surprising her. Not only did he know she’d been married, he already knew when her husband had died? 

There was none of the sympathy she’d have expected in the words. What on Earth had happened to him in the last four years to turn him so harsh? Surely his time in the ice couldn’t have changed him so drastically. For that matter if this was normal behaviour for him now, Romanoff wouldn’t be probing at him so delicately. “You know about Daniel?” 

His eyes narrowed. “You think the first thing I did when I woke up wasn’t to find out what happened to my best girl? Of course I know she got married. She’s got kids, and grandkids.”

“She? What are you talking about?” Peggy was now thoroughly confused. “Daniel and I never had any children.”

“Peggy Carter is dying in a care home with Alzheimer’s disease,” Steve declared, his voice cold. “I go visit her every chance I get. I don’t know who the hell you are, lady, but you ain’t her.”

“What?” Peggy couldn’t have been any more shocked if he’d simply handed her a live wire instead. She stared at him, trying and failing to understand how what he could be saying was true. The only part of it that now made sense was his ‘unreasoning’ antagonism towards her. 

“So that’s where you keep disappearing to,” Romanoff said with the air of someone having a revelation. “Here I figured you were keeping another girlfriend tucked away somewhere.” She paused, and tipped her head to one side. “No, wait, I was right in the first place wasn’t I.”

“ _Natasha_. Now is not the time.” Steve’s voice was sharp as he switched his glare from Peggy to Romanoff. “And you coulda asked. I don’t keep secrets, you know that.”

“What you do on your own time is none of my business,” Romanoff replied, as if it was a reminder. "But you didn't bring this up until _now_?"

"I wanted to see what she'd tell us if she thought I believed her," Steve said, with another unfriendly look towards Peggy.

Not even the confirmation that the two of them were involved was enough to distract Peggy from Steve’s flat assertion that another woman was living her life. Surely HYDRA couldn’t have replaced her, Daniel would never have been fooled. Unless they brainwashed him into it... and Howard? And Jarvis? And half a dozen other people who knew her well enough that no imitation, no matter how clever, could fool them?

No, that was too Machiavellian to be possible. But the idea that they might have replaced her later, to fool Steve after he woke, that was more plausible. “Steve, look at me,” she urged him. “Listen to my voice. Surely it hasn’t been so long you’ve forgotten.” God knew she still remembered everything about him, right down to his scent. “Wouldn’t it be far easier for them to convince you a woman in her nineties was me, than to reproduce me this accurately?”

“Actually, we have tech that can perfectly reproduce someone’s appearance and voice.” Romanoff gave her a vaguely apologetic look. “HYDRA would only have needed to find a woman approximately Carter’s size.”

The idea of technology that could do something like that was stunning in its own way, but it certainly didn’t help Peggy’s cause. “Then ask me anything,” she tried desperately. “Steve, they didn’t take my memories. The flagpole, our conversation in the taxi, the dance you owe me...”

“All of those are things other people witnessed,” Steve pointed out. “You could have been coached. And she knows things _nobody_ else could know.”

“Wait, you said she has Alzheimer’s,” Romanoff broke in, frowning.

“She still has good days,” Steve insisted. “She remembers enough, it’s _her_.”

“No, that’s not my point, although it is a valid one.” The other woman leaned back in her seat, looking thoughtful. “SHIELD has been experimenting with cloning technology for years. The initial idea was to have replacement organs and limbs available for agents who were badly hurt in the field. There was even research done into ways to transfer all brain functions into the new body. That way as long as a high-level agent wasn’t killed outright, they could just transfer him or her into their clone and poof, instant healing.”

“And I’m sure it never occurred to anybody that they’d be able to, say, replace an inconvenient political figure with a clone trained to be more sympathetic to SHIELD’s cause.” Steve’s voice was grim, and the darkness in his eyes matched his tone. 

“I never said it was completely benign, just that the initial idea was to help badly injured field agents.” Romanoff shrugged. “Regardless, the project failed. Obviously they didn’t want to have to wait twenty years for the cloned body to reach adulthood, but they never found a way to successfully force grow it. As soon as it’s removed from the vat, it starts to break down internally. As for the mind transfer, there are always gaps in the memory and oddities in the personality.”

She leaned forward again, looking back and forth from Peggy to Steve. “So if someone tried to replace the president, it would become obvious pretty quickly that something was up. But a woman in her nineties? It’s not unreasonable she’d be dying of organ failure. And Alzheimer’s is the perfect cover for the deterioration of the mental transfer.”

“They cloned me?” Peggy thought she’d had her full quota of shocks for the day, but this one topped them all. Well, maybe not the revelation that Steve was alive. 

“What about all the photos? I’ve seen plenty of them, with her and all her family,” Steve protested.

“Come on, Steve, I could do that in five minutes on the computer, you know that,” Romanoff retorted.

“There’s _no_ record that she went missing in 1954.” Steve shook his head, with a familiar stubborn expression on his face. “They can’t have cloned her way back then.”

“You mean the records I assume you looked up in SHIELD’s database?” Romanoff gave him an arch look.

That seemed to stop Steve short. “The same databases we already know were controlled by HYDRA,” he said, and sounded disgusted with himself. He rubbed his hand over his face, a gesture Peggy knew meant he was both exhausted and feeling like he’d failed somehow.

“Like you said, of course the first thing you did was look for her. They had to realize that if you discovered she’d gone missing, it wouldn’t matter how cold the trail was. You’d never have stopped searching for her.” Romanoff stretched out her foot and nudged Steve’s knee with her toe, drawing him into looking up at her and out of his silent self-recrimination. “None of this is your fault, Steve. You had no way to know.”

“You said the same thing about Bucky,” Steve said, but he sounded less upset. 

“And it was as true then as it is now.” Romanoff nudged him again, then pulled her foot back into her own space, clearly satisfied that he wasn’t going to continue brooding.

There were layers of silent communication going on between them. Peggy had seen something similar when Steve and Bucky were together - the two men had known each other so long and so well that they didn’t always need to use full sentences or even any words at all. This connection wasn’t quite as deep as that, but it was obvious they’d spent a great deal more time together than Peggy had ever had a chance to have with Steve.

Again, she tried hard not to feel hurt or jealous. There was certainly no point in her being upset with Steve for moving on. Quite the opposite, considering Peggy had loved not one but two men since his ‘death’.

“So the woman I’ve been visiting all this time, spilling my heart out to, is a fake?” Steve’s hand clenched into a fist.

“She might be a clone, but Steve, she’s still Peggy Carter in every way that really matters,” Romanoff said softly. “She has the same memories and thoughts and personality, and as far as _she_ knows she’s the real thing.”

“As disturbing as it is to think that there’s another ‘me’ out there somewhere, it comforts me to know that on some level, I was still there for you when you needed me,” Peggy put in her two cents. 

They seemed to be the right words, because the last of the hardness fled Steve’s expression, and when he looked at her again his gaze was full of remorse and contrition. “Peggy, I’m _sorry_. I’ve been treating you like an enemy.”

“Don’t apologize, you had every right to be suspicious,” she assured him. She hesitated, then admitted, “Frankly I’m still half convinced you’re some kind of HYDRA trick as well. I can’t quite believe any of this can possibly be real.”

“This whole situation is completely FUBAR,” Steve muttered under his breath, and she didn’t think he’d meant to say it out loud.

Peggy smiled to hear him use the army slang. The Commandos had one and all tried to pretend when she was around that they didn’t use dirty language, not even the short forms that had been so popular among soldiers in the trenches, but they often forgot to mind their tongues when the firefights started. 

Steve had admitted to her once that he tried even harder than the others to avoid it, too conscious of his public image as ‘Captain America’. And of course none of them used that sort of language in polite company. It was just that they sometimes forgot she was supposed to be counted in that company, and she’d far rather have had their camaraderie than their manners. She could swear with the best of them - and had proved it, once or twice, just to shock them.

Romanoff was smirking at him, having clearly heard the comment as well. “Why, Steve. You do know that acronym starts with a bad word, don’t you?” Her voice was too perfectly sweet and innocent to be real.

“Really, Romanoff?” Steve turned a long-suffering, exasperated look on her. “ _Still_?”

The other woman laughed. “Hey, at least we don’t tease you about it _every_ time, now. We’ll let you live it down completely... in a year or two.” 

The banter was clearly part of a running joke, one more bit of the history between them that Peggy didn’t share. It hadn’t bothered her nearly as much when it had been Steve and Bucky who left her standing on the outside of their friendship, so she knew it was jealousy that was eating at her. Unfortunately, knowing didn’t make it any less painful or easier to ignore.

“So what am I supposed to do, now?” Peggy asked, needing to change the subject. “I still don’t even know what year it is.”

“It’s 2015,” Steve told her, and the sympathy in his expression said he understood exactly how badly his words rattled her. Of course he did - he’d have felt the same shock when he’d woken up.

“ _Twenty_...” Peggy couldn’t even make herself finish repeating the date. “Sixty years? They’ve had me _sixty years_? And Bucky for seventy, my God.” Small wonder she could barely comprehend the technology she’d seen so far. 

“Don’t worry,” Steve hastened to reassure her. “I’ll help you get adjusted. I’ve had practice at it, after all. We’ll get you settled in Avengers Tower, bring Maximoff in to check and make sure HYDRA didn’t plant any mines in your head, and you’ll be a modern woman before you know it.”

“You can take over my suite at the Tower for now, I hardly use it,” Romanoff added. “For that matter, feel free to raid my wardrobe, we’re about the same size. We’ll get you your own stuff eventually, but there’s no reason for you to be stuck with nothing until then.”

“That’s very generous of you.” Peggy was grateful, but there was a part of her that resented the offer as well. It wasn’t difficult to infer that the reason Romanoff rarely used her own rooms was likely because she now shared Steve’s, and would almost certainly be doing so while the three of them were there.

“I guess I owe you a dance, while we’re at it,” Steve said. When she looked at him he had the same shy, slightly disbelieving smile that he used to give her whenever he’d offer her his hand to hold, or ask if she’d like to take a walk with him. Not so very long ago - or quite some time ago, depending on how you looked at it - Peggy had loved the sight of that smile, because it almost always accompanied one of their rare moments alone together.

Now she had to swallow before she could answer, and it was an effort to keep her voice light and steady when she did. “Better late than never, I suppose. Seventy years is a bit much to keep a girl waiting, though. _I_ was there on time.” She’d gone every year afterward too, always on the second Saturday after the anniversary of his death, right up until the year she’d married Daniel.

Thinking of her husband reminded her that there was another person who had a say in the matter. “That is, if you don’t object?” Peggy asked Romanoff. She certainly hoped the other woman would understand and let them have the closure, but Peggy also wouldn’t blame her if she didn’t.

“Hey, it’s none of my business,” Romanoff replied, lifting her hands as if in surrender. Her answer bewildered Peggy. Had she been reading the situation wrong after all? Romanoff had said ‘another girlfriend’, but perhaps the first one was someone Peggy hadn’t yet met?

“Nat...” Steve’s shy smile turned into a pained look. “Never mind the damned rules, if it would bother you...”

“Even if I had the right to object, you think I’m going to force you break a promise?” Romanoff laughed, and there was no sign of resentment or jealousy in the sound. “I’m not trying to change you, either, Steve.”

Now thoroughly confused, Peggy watched as Steve relaxed and smiled again. This time it was aimed at Romanoff instead of Peggy. “Thank you,” he said, his expression tender and not in the least hesitant.

When he turned back to Peggy, some of that lightness of heart still lingered in his eyes. “That’s that, then. We’ll get you settled, I’ll get to keep my promise, and then...” This smile was one of pure determination. “Then, we tell the world that you’ve been found. Bucky will come to us, and we’ll finally be able to help him.”

“In the end, that’s all that’s really important.” Peggy spoke the words to remind herself as much as him. She was going to have to build a new life here, and she could damned well be grateful that Steve was in it at all. At least it meant she didn’t have to choose between him and Bucky, since she had a suspicion that Bucky would react very badly to losing her. Even - or perhaps especially - to Steve.

Nor did she want to lose him. Watching Bucky suffer as they used her to punish him, knowing he was doing everything in his power to keep her safe, even at the risk of his own life and sanity... of course she still loved him, more than ever.

She only hoped that after all this time, there would be enough left of him to love her back with anything more than the slavish devotion HYDRA had forced on him.


End file.
